The Three Fifths Compromise

The 3/5ths compromise was created after the Great Compromise was formed. The Great Compromise determined that there would be a House of Representatives with representation based on population and also a Senate where each state received 2 seats regardless of population of a state. This compromise settled the argument between large states and small states, but the next question that arose was whether slaves counted as part of the population for determining a state’s representation in the House of Representatives.  That then transformed the argument from being between small and large states to being between Southern and Northern states. The South wanted slaves to be counted in the population to determine how many representatives a state got, because that is where the majority of the slaves were located, the constituted a large portion of the population in the South, and they worried that if slaves weren’t counted, the South wouldn’t have enough representatives in the House and that would cause the North to out-rule the South on issues of slavery. On the other hand the North argued against slaves being counted by saying that if slaves didn’t get the right to vote, then the South shouldn’t be able to have more representatives in the House, and they also believed that if slaves were counted in the South’s population then they would out vote the North on issues of slavery.  So, because of the argument over this issue, they came to a compromise. It was called the 3/5ths compromise and stated that slaves would count as 3/5ths of a person toward a state’s population to determine how many representatives they got in the House of Representatives and count for 3/5ths a person for the purposes of taxation.  With this plan neither the South nor the North entirely got what they had wanted, and therefore were not completely happy about the compromise, but it ended the debating and arguing in peace and they each got partially what they wanted. The 3/5ths compromise was enacted on July 12, 1787 after accepting the plan for the compromise created by James Wilson. James Wilson, a liberal delegate from Pennsylvania, ironically created the compromise in order to gain support from the Southern states for the new government plan.  It seemingly guaranteed that the South would be politically dominant and strongly represented in the House. The compromise, rather than slowing the importation on slaves, increased it by giving slavery a new political life. The South continued to import slaves and breed them even illegally after a law prohibited the importation of new slaves to increase the South’s political status in the House. In the first U.S. Congress beginning in 1790, the South held 45% of the seats in the House of Representatives.  Over the long term though, the compromise didn’t work for the South as planned because by 1820 the Northern states had grown more rapidly than the Southern states and therefore by then the representation of Southern states in the House had fallen 42%.  The 3/5ths compromise was later reevaluated in the Dred Scott trial in 1856.   

Sources:

"The Slavery Compromises." UL-Lafayette Computing Support Services. Web. 26 Oct. 2011. http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/slavery2.html.

"The Three Fifths Compromise." Digital History. Web. 26 Oct. 2011. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=306.

"The "Three-Fifths" Compromise . . ." African American Registry: A Nonprofit Education Organization. Web. 26 Oct. 2011. http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/three-fifths-compromise.